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For my mother, the late Nechama Rivlin, Jerusalem’s cinematheque was no less than a cultural house of worship. For decades, she found sanctuary within its walls from the trappings of daily life. Its cinemas offered my mother a portal to other places where she gave herself to the dreams and narratives of people from all over the world, taking in a wealth of cultural knowledge, laughing out loud and letting herself be moved to tears.
She was the one who taught me the language of the arts and in particular, the language of film. She showed me how, sat in one’s seat in that dark theatre, one can surrender oneself completely to those moving images, the changing soundtrack, and all that dialogue – even on the occasions when there was so little of it – and indeed, amongst others, she would take me to see these films where shots were as long and drawn out as the silences. In those films that we saw together, we gained insights into the vast complexity of our world and its spellbinding beauty, and oh how we loved re-enacting, verbatim, scenes that particularly moved us. Therefore, I was beyond delighted to oblige when I was approached by the cinematheque’s Israeli Film Archive and given the opportunity to dedicate a collection to her memory.
In this collection, I chose to set my sights on another great passion of my mother’s – her love of nature and the land. Nechama enjoyed collecting beautiful things and as a whole, had famously exquisite taste. Nature was one common thread that ran through many of her collections. One such example was leaves that she would dry between the pages of thick, weighty book – those that she later remembered to take out, she would either frame by size, turn into a bookmark, or add into a picture which she then hung in the children’s – and later, grandchildren’s bedrooms. Then there were the flowers she would hang upside down so that they did not lose their shape, seeds she would thread on a string which then dangled from an assortment of hooks she had screwed into the walls. Even in her cooking, she would regularly forage herbs from the forest nearby, or the garden she had planted on the balcony in our home; whatever failed to make it into the pan, she would dry and add to her many seeded strings. After she passed, sitting in the kitchen and looking at all the herbs hanging from walls, I realised just how truly we were all surrounded by every single thing of beauty she had deemed lovely and worthy of collecting from her surroundings.
Everything that she considered beautiful in nature, she would point out to us: “Look how lovely that yellow peak [of bloom] is,”; “Come quick! The honeysucker is drinking sugar water”; “Let’s count backwards until the sun is all gone behind that mountain”; “Shh, don’t move… here comes a partridge family – they say they’re good luck, you know.”
Her love of nature ran true and deep, whilst her connection with the land went all the way back to her childhood in Herut – an agricultural village in central Israel, founded by her parents after they had both immigrated from Ukraine as members of the Zionist Youth Movement. In winter, after we’d had some heavy rain, I remember her turning our attention to the potent smell of the wet soil. Then from summertime, I have a memory of her cupping dried clumps of earth desperately vying for some water and respite from the sweltering Israeli dry season.
She also knew how to scare (or rather, caution) us witless from the impending future. “I won’t be here when you’re all stepping in plastic,” she would mutter under her breath if we failed to reuse a disposable bottle, or whenever we brought home some pointless plastic tat we picked up at the local shopping centre’s haberdashery.
When my father was elected President of Israel, my mother seized the opportunity and platform she now had as First Lady to highlight a variety of issues and causes which she was passionate about, and believed were worthy of championing in the Israeli public sphere. She was a regular at almost every nature conservation-themed event. Speaking at the Zalul Environmental Association’s awards ceremony, she said that “in a country as tiny as ours where the sea stretches across its whole length, and mountains tower to the east where rivers flow, we could have been a veritable paradise. Thanks to all of you, some of the rivers have indeed been rehabilitated and restored, but there is still much work to be done.”
Trawling through the archives, I found images and footage that tell the most tantalising tale of Israeli nature, and the seismic impact that the country’s rapid development over the last century has had on it. Some of the footage indeed captures those Edenic vistas my mother was referring to – rivers and streams flowing through undisturbed nature, where human interference is all but nonexistent.
Gradually, as the years roll by, man’s presence and impact become that much more discernible. Fresh drinking water is captured in footage of small and teenage Bedouin girls carrying vases from the local watering hole on their heads, all the way to the grazing fields. Further footage shows the craft of mat-making by the rivers – from collecting the canes from the riverbank to boating them over to the village and having them woven by the local women. There is also footage of malaria patients being tested at a makeshift clinic by Lake Hula; a predicament that would ultimately result in the draining of the lake. These days, water is steadily being reintroduced to what used to be Lake Hula, whilst a careful recovery and rehabilitation process of all natural habitats damaged in the great draining is also underway.
I have unearthed footage of Israel’s national watermain being built – showing how the water was barraged in the Degania Dam before being pumped through pipes and mains to all parts of the country; a novelty that had a detrimental effect on the Jordan River flow and the Dead Sea water levels whose southern region consequently dried up. These days, restoring the water to the Jordan River is proving rather difficult as it would ultimately result in the flooding of crop fields and local communities built along the now-drained route.
Additional footage shows a random assortment of tents pitched along the Sea of Galilee shore and later, the rise and development of the tower and stockade Jewish settlements. In these clips, we see people going by foot from place to place along narrow trails in open fields. Longer journeys, that involved carrying heavier loads, were taken by donkey or horse. The footage also clocks the arrival of motorcars; at first just the odd one, here and there – and then, gradually more and more. It almost beggars belief that once upon a time, just a single motor vehicle would pass through the valley once a week.
The following collection invites you to take in and explore the development journey that Israel has been on. In many ways, the country and its people managed to pull off the unthinkable and in a mere 100-year span, were able to erect modern cities alongside agricultural communities, based on globally-acquired knowledge. Having said that, one simply cannot turn a blind eye to this Zionist feat’s failure to consider the importance of nature conservation, and that the rich diversity of local flora and fauna are also every bit as much part of this land’s heritage.
The massive growth in the earth’s population, coupled with an accelerated process of vast development have inflicted and continue to inflict untold damage on the planet’s ecosystems. Thousands of flora and fauna species go extinct daily. As part of current nature conservation efforts, the various bodies involved (along with the diehard zealots) are putting tremendous efforts towards restoring and reintroducing into nature a variety of species that vanished under imposing concrete slabs as roads were built, and cities rose from the ground.
After her death, two schemes focusing on the reintroduction of endangered species into nature were dedicated to my mother memory. The former is based in Jerusalem’s Botanical Gardens where members of the public are encouraged to purchase small bags full of native plant seeds for them to plant in the soil – whether it be in their gardens or potted plants on their balconies. The other scheme takes us to the Endangered Species Sanctuary Park in the Kfar Hayarok youth village, where teens are actively reintroducing into nature previously dominant but long vanished native flora and fauna.
I now offer my own contribution in honour and celebration of my mother – an Israeli Film Archive collection of local nature through the years.
Please note that every clip included in this collection is accompanied by a short introductory text below.